Next week, Hyo-Joo Kim will line up at the final women’s golf major of the season, the Evian Championship, in an attempt to successfully defend the title that she won in historic fashion last year. The Korean won her first major in Evian Les Bains twelve months ago at her first attempt and at just 19 years and 2 months old, became the third youngest major winner ever. Even if Kim does manage to successfully defend her title next week, she is unlikely to do it in quite as impressive style as last year. The 2014 tournament was her first ever major and in her first round, when most players show at least a hint of nerves, Kim shot a 61, the lowest score ever recorded in a major by either a man or a woman. Not a bad start to her assault on the majors. And then to clinch the Championship, Kim needed to birdie the 18th hole of her final round to beat the great Australian, Karrie Webb, a player who was more than twice Kim’s age. Kim’s lack of experience proved no barrier and the birdie putt was duly sunk to give her the title.
Yet Kim’s historic victory was somewhat absorbed by the fact that South Korean golfers have reached a point of utter domination in women’s golf; no longer is a Korean player winning a major title particularly noteworthy, so common is it these days. Five of the world’s top ten players are Korean and there are 37 Korean women in the world’s top 100. Of the last twenty majors, twelve have been won by Koreans. These are remarkable statistics and the Korean dominance is showing few signs of abating; world number one, Inbee Park, is still only 27 years old and is the oldest of all the Korean players in the top ten.
The dominance of the Korean women is a somewhat peculiar phenomenon, particularly when you consider that only the occasional Korean male player has broken into the elite ranks. That Korean women have taken the game by storm to such an extent is even more impressive when you consider that it is a nation of only 50 million, compared to the USA, which has a population of over 321 million.
So where has this dominance come from? It was sparked in the late 1990s when Se Ri Pak became the first Korean player to win one of golf’s major championships. Pak won the 1998 US Open to become the youngest winner of the title and back in South Korea, a 9 year-old Inbee Park was watching on television. Ten years later, Park would win the same title, supplanting Pak as the youngest ever US Open winner.
It was not just Park who was inspired by watching Pak’s US Open win seventeen years ago, a whole raft of young Korean girls- and their parents- had their eyes opened to the fact that a career as a professional golfer was viable.
There are a few theories as to why Korean golfers are quite so successful. One is that Korean society is so competitive that it primes these young girls for the world of competitive sport and effectively breeds champions. A study in 2010 in the Journal of Sport and Leisure Studies entitled “A Socio-cultural Analysis of the Influx and Success of Korean Golfers on the LPGA Tour” found that Korean players practice longer and harder than any of their counterparts- they were the first ones to arrive at the driving range and the last ones to leave. This is an attitude that has been engrained in Korean children by their society, which emphasises the importance of constant repetition in pursuit of perfection.
There is also a theory that explains why many more female golfers emerge from Korea than men; Korean fathers push their daughters far harder than fathers anywhere else in the world. In Korea, the men must serve a mandatory two years in the army which interrupts their path towards becoming an elite athlete but women do not have this requirement. Therefore, fathers feel that their daughters have a better chance of succeeding in sport. Just how hard Korean fathers push their daughters is illustrated by Se Ri Pak and her father. As a child, he would make her get up at 5:30 every morning and run up and down the 15 flights of stairs in their apartment block to build up her strength. He would make her practise in the cold until icicles formed in her hair. And to overcome her nerves, he made her sleep all night in a cemetery. These are methods that would not last long in Europe but it also highlights that, more often than not, a country’s dominance comes not from luck or genes or facilities. Rather, it comes from sheer hard work. The Korean women have worked incalculably hard to get where they are and the competition from their compatriots has pushed them on even further. Kim may or may not successfully defend her title next week but it looks like the Korean dominance is here to stay.
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